


trapped by the constantly expanding universe

by eggydeggy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Black Paladin Shiro (Voltron), Blue Paladin Lance (Voltron), Gen, Hunk & Keith (Voltron) Friendship, I did feel sad when writing this tho, POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 08, Post-War, Red Paladin Keith (Voltron), Running Away, Sad, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, The Keith/Lance is implied, it could be Adam or it could be Curtis, maybe? - Freeform, not really explicit with any of these relationships, not sure, up to you ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29118327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggydeggy/pseuds/eggydeggy
Summary: The battle is over. The battle is over, he tells himself again, because it is.So why doesn't it feel like that? Why is he still running to the Black Lion? Desperately, as if he's still fighting in this wretched war.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Allura & Pidge | Katie Holt, Hunk & Keith (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	trapped by the constantly expanding universe

**Author's Note:**

> Yo what up everyone
> 
> I know I said I'd write a sequel to my work in the Spider-Man fandom a while ago but then I didn't which I feel mega bad about. Sorry if you were here for that :(
> 
> Anyways, Voltron was like, my first love and first heartbreak. I wrote this in September of 2020, when I was remembering how bad Voltron hurt me, then just remembered I had it so I'm posting it now. 
> 
> It's technically Post-Canon, Post-War, but Shiro does pilot the Black Lion and though it's not explicitly stated, the other Paladins pilot their original lions.  
> This fic is me asking "how do you expect me to believe the Paladins would just be content in one career field after traveling throughout the entire freaking universe?" and then ignoring the ending each character got. I can't say it's like... a better ending... but it was fun to write.  
> That's a lie, actually, this was really depressing to write but I'm glad I wrote it nonetheless.
> 
> Enjoy!

It’s been two months since the final battle and everything has settled down. Everyone is settled, everything is settled, there are no more problems left for him to solve.

Shiro tosses around in his bed again and stares at his wall.

The battle is over. The battle is over, he tells himself again, because it _is_.

Shiro turns around again, this time staring at his husband’s profile. He looks peaceful when he’s asleep, like there’s no doubt that the war is over and that the Empire has dissolved.

He can hear himself grinding his teeth and he tugs at his hair. Why is he so restless? What is he anxious for? Shiro can tell this isn’t normal— he’s yearning for something so desperately that it’s keeping him awake for dozens of hours at a time.

_I should stay_ , he tells himself in an attempt to convince himself to not run where his legs are trying so hard to take him. _Stay here, with your loving husband, with the life you fought so hard to have_.

_Stay_.

Instead, Shiro turns around and leaves the bed. He walks to his closet and digs around for a bit until he finds his duffel bag, already stocked with clothes.

As he makes his way towards the door, he turns around. His instinct is to apologize, but he bites his tongue because he’s not sorry, not in the slightest. He leaves a note and closes the door after him.

—

In the morning, Keith makes his way to the roof of the building. No one had told him yet that Shiro left, but Keith could feel it, feel that Shiro was once again just out of his reach. This time, though, Keith had no anger towards any of it— not Shiro for leaving and not himself for not being enough to make him stay.

Truth be told, Keith had thought a lot about leaving in the last two months. It was his newfound sense of duty that told him to stay put. He laughed a little to himself because who would’ve thought that Shiro would be the first to go back up in space when they had Keith, who was running himself ragged to get back up there.

He hears the door hinges squeak open and the patter of familiar paced steps.

“Did you hear about Shiro?” Hunk asks, and by way of his tone, Keith can already tell Hunk didn’t need to hear about it either.

“Didn’t need too.” Keith says, and shifts over so Hunk also has room to lean on the railing on the edge of the building.

“His husband found out from a post-it note stuck to the fridge.” Hunk’s voice is light, but his words and everything else radiating off of him sound heavy.

Keith takes in a deep breath and turns to look Hunk in the eye. “Who do you think is going next?”

“I thought it’d be you,” Hunk says, and he’s smiling but it’s not funny. It’s not funny because he _was_ the first to leave and the first to destroy the team doing so.

“Me too,” Keith says instead.

“Pidge, then.” He laughs when he says it, and this time Keith sees he means it. “Her mother has been breathing down her neck, I’m sure she’s dying to get back up there.”

—

One month after that conversation, Hunk feels an itch in his hands and it’s two am but he’s a Paladin of Voltron and no one is going to tell him he can’t go bake scaltrite cookies right now.

He bakes one batch, and another, and another until he’s used up all the ingredients. Hunk sets them out to cool, and he makes up his mind on a decision he didn’t think he’d ever discuss.

Hunk brings one cookie to Keith’s door and places it on top of his own post-it that says _“I’m sorry_ ” because he’s not sorry for leaving, he just sorry he gave Keith his trust not to be the next one to leave. When he walks back to his room to grab his already packed duffel, it feels like an ache in his chest is _just_ about to be filled. He’s burning with desire to leave, just leave and fly away into uncharted space.

So he does.

—

Allura and Coran left for the Altean colony exactly three weeks after the final battle. They’ve kept in touch with Earth forces, but not as much as they have the Paladins. Somehow, though, when Pidge mentions that Hunk left Earth almost two weeks ago and Shiro even longer ago, they’re both surprised.

“Why! I never thought you would all settle down completely on Earth, but I didn’t anticipate you’d spend so _little_ time there after all your begging to go back!” Coran says over their voice call, stroking his mustache.

“I must ask, Pidge,” Allura butts in, “Are you sure they’re safe? Have they been in contact at all?”

Pidge gives them a small smile, half to ease them and half just because she's _missed_ Allura and Coran so much. “They’ll be fine. They’re Paladins of Voltron.” Her words don’t quell Allura’s increasing anxiety, but Pidge knows it’s true. She’d know if they weren’t.

“Okay…” Allura says dubiously. She gnaws on her bottom lip. “Are you or the others planning on leaving too?”

“No.” Pidge says and her tongue tastes like ash because that’s a _lie_ , she’s lying, she’s planning on leaving tonight.

—

“Are you gonna be the last one?” Lance asks Keith at breakfast the next morning. It reminds him of when they used to have breakfast all together. A week after the final battle, when they were allowed outside of their medical rooms, all seven of them would eat breakfast together; a result of them living together for almost four years and waking up to eat together every single day.

Now it’s just the two of them, Keith and Lance, and the absence of the others is an unavoidable sting.

Keith raises his eyebrow, trying to be coy. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

Lance doesn’t return the sentiment. He doesn’t look up from his plate. “Yeah,” he says. “Something.”

Suddenly, another tray hits the table and Lance’s sister is sliding into the seat next to him. “Morning, boys.” She greats and bumps shoulders with her brother, who is decidedly less interested. “Where’s the third member of your super elite breakfast table?”

“Gone,” The two of them say together, and it’s either something in their tone or just what they say, but her face contorts with shock and she eventually gets up from the table all together, breakfast untouched.

—

Three weeks from Pidge’s leave, Lance packs up and makes sure he has enough time to spare for Keith to pack if he wasn’t already ready ( _which he won’t be_ , Lance tells himself, _it’s Keith. Of course he’ll be ready to leave_ ). Swinging the duffel over his shoulder, he walks down the hallway in long strides and knocks on Keith’s door.

It opens immediately to Keith’s very surprised face, Keith who also happens to be holding his own duffel bag.

“What are you doing?” Keith whispers harshly.

Lance, stunned into silence because the last time they were so far from the same page was when Keith left the first time, shakes his head to get back into the moment. “I didn’t want you to be the last one.”

To Lance’s surprise, Keith’s face softens at his words. “Lead the way, Sharpshooter.”

Later, Shiro thinks that when Lance’s sister said “Super Elite Breakfast Club,” she meant more than she was letting on.

They used to make a big deal of pronouncing to the universe how anyone could be a Paladin, or have Paladin potential. Help anyone and everyone in need and you were as good as a Paladin, that whole schtick.

But, Shiro knew then and clearly knew now, it was all a lie. Because no one else, no one in the entire universe could know what it meant to pilot a Lion of Voltron. The insatiable hunger to fly farther and farther away from home and further and further into the unknown is something only four other people know; it’s not a feeling anyone else could ever experience. It’s a “Super Elite Breakfast Club” feeling.

It’s a feeling he hates. It pushed him away from his husband, from his life on Earth he fought so hard to get back, from any sense of _stability_.

He flies now not even with the purpose to help people. Helping people is a secondary consideration and that disgusts him to his core, that he’s become someone who would put anything else above that Paladin code he followed so desperately so long ago.

He’s sinking. Flying further and further away from stability, responsibility, and everything else he’s ever _loved_ , all because of this urge to explore everything and fly everywhere he can and everywhere he can’t. He’s spiraling, and he feels so ironically trapped in the never ending expansive of the universe.

Maybe he’ll call out to the others. To Hunk, Pidge. To Lance. To Keith. Are they sinking like he is? Flying in the unknown depths of the cosmos rather than towards the things and people they love?

Takashi Shirogane, Black Paladin of New, Black Paladin of Voltron, destined and cursed to love nothing but piloting his Lion. It’s rather gothic, now that he thinks about it.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on tumblr! @eggydeggy
> 
> so fun fact, the order I chose each paladin to leave is the exact opposite I thought they would leave based on the first episode. Like, for example, from the first episode I would have thought Hunk was the least likely to go to space, so he was one of the firsts to go back to space. Shiro is first because after I learned that pre-canon he had himself a fiancé and ignoring the fact that his arm was deteriorating, I thought he would be the least likely to leave.
> 
> Pidge is right in the middle because my initial reaction to her is that she'd just go follow the research; if it asked her to stay then she would stay and if it needed her to leave she would leave. That's why in Pidge's section, I reference how her emotional ties pushed her to leave not any of her research, so her leaving Earth after returning could be the opposite of how she would initially leave Earth.
> 
> Obviously Keith would leave Earth first and Lance would follow him (this is the literal plot of 1x01), so here, when they are leaving Earth after resettling on Earth, I wrote that Lance was leaving first and Keith was following him. 
> 
> :)


End file.
